I think you missed my point. There is a reason why man made materials have chemical names and spec sheets. When you engineer a product you need to know what you are working with. Manufacturers can't gamble with if a particular material will work based on hear say and sounds about right. What if six months down the road something failed because of the material specified. All of the established plastics have specifications as to strength and composition there is no mysteries. Would you weld something important with a mystery rod? JUMA is what? Where is the specs?
If this is a legit material and Atlas has a fair price then they should have no fear in disclosing the chemical name. Why do we have to find out after the fact that a particular material was not suitable? Do you wait until you have a bunch of parts in service to find out that the tensile or impact strenght wasnt quite enough? Or perhaps it is sensitive to uv or doesnt mix well with certain chemicals? That is why I want the chemical name. That way you can just look up the specs. No mysteries
Hi,
Atlas in their marketing of this product and exclusivity allows them to set a price for the cue makers needs. We are not using this material for something that requires a tech spec. as would be needed for safety related reasons or engineering functions. All cue makers need is for it to function with the epoxy and the other coatings that are required. Atlas makes claims to that effect. I know when I pick it up it is denser than phenolic and I have built many cues with it for the joint material and it hits A-OK by my standards. There may be those who disagree with that and they can use their favorite stuff.
I think 2 bucks and inch is well worth it. It is about the same price as phenolic. If they wanted to, they could have put this product much higher than phenolic and sold it as a superior product but they did not. In my view Juma is better that phenolic because it is more consistent for a few very important reasons.
Atlas sells a product for cue building and advertises it's properties as such. If this product is used in other applications where it must hold stringent tolerances for heat, strength, and elasticity coefficients, I am sure other firms may be getting a higher proprietary price for it and it may be for liability reasons factored into the top and bottom line concerning price point.
Conversely, there may be a supplier that is selling it a lot cheaper (under a different name) because it is a commodity product that works for another application without liability or risk in it's use.
To be honest with you, I am pretty sure it does not pose any significant health risk while machining while on the other hand phenolic creates an air borne dust that I am sure can't be good for you when exposed to it on a chronic basis.
If Juma was failing on cues believe me we would all know it. It has been around a pretty long time now and every cue maker I know uses it and loves it for a lot of reasons.
Your points are well taken and I respect your questioning attitude, believe me you are singing to the choir with me and I can't disagree with your premiss as quoted. I have developed and use a very detailed QA/QC Manual for the building of my cues and work to a very strict standard which is based on 10 CFR 50 Appendix B. That standard is way overkill for cue making but I was brain washed for 30 years and old habits die hard. It requires our shop to have a questioning attitude, continue the aspire to raise the bar or standards through beta testing and downstream tracking , seek peer check & review and approach discovered problems with a root cause analysis, corrective action response to reveal lessons learned.
I don't have to know the chemistry of Juma to testify on how well it has worked for my cues because I have tested and tracked it's history in the field. As cue makers we all do things a little different and we must make decisions based on our own experiences which are subjective as well as objective.
If I found out that I could save 50% on this product I would not stop buying it from Atlas to save $ 3.00 per cue. We need to support great companies like Atlas as they are always giving us a fair shake and are offering more great products to our market all of the time.
Now if I could find a veneer vendor selling aN equal product for half the money I would be there in a heart beat.:shocked2:
JMO,
Rick G
